August 9, 2012

That was odd. Romney had been ahead, then after the weekend, Obama went up, then fell back, a point each day. Who knows why? When Obama went ahead, we were experiencing that idiocy with Harry Reid telling us he'd heard that Romney hadn't paid any taxes for 10 years. If that was effective, why hasn't it been effective to say Romney killed a lady? There are lies and there are lies...

Why would people vote to continue what we have for another 4 years. Do we really want 4 more years of failure, never ending debt, and a never ending surge of people dependent on hand-outs from the government.

110 million people in this country receive welfare. Why would people vote to continue that reality and have even more people on welfare. What kind of people are we?

Seriously, is getting free condoms worth all of that?

Reagan's famous line was are you better off than you were four years ago. Maybe that line is true or not today. But, the question should be rephrased...

"Does the future look brighter today than it did four years ago."

The answer to that is NO NO NO. The future is much darker now after 4 years of endless debt, extreme money printing by central banks, drastic increases in welfare, and 4 years of failure by Obama.

In a strange way, the fact that he is president gives O some benefit of the doubt. Remember that movie years back "Murder at 1600" where the gimmick was what if the president was guilty of murder? It just didn't work as a movie because no one can seriously believe a sitting president would do such a thing. The prestigue of 230+ years prevents most from seeing the president as just a man.

In this kind of a way, whatever Obama does is considered wise and right by some simply because he is president, and Rex non potest peccare. Looking at his actions from the outside, it's truly hard to see why anyone can possibly think of him as anything but what he is, an overpromoted political hack. The office itself allows him to get away with it.

It's polls and the MSM, in an unholy interaction. Public gets most of its information from MSM, but over time reflects on that chaos, reads between the lines (as Soviet citizens did with Pravda) and comes closer to the truth. Hence the polls don't reflect considered opinions.

The best hope Obama has is to flood the MSM zone late in the campaign, with even more outrageous fabrications than we've seen recently. That will excite the opinions of his true believers, and such of the public which doesn't reflect over time.

But as this poll shows, over time the public catches up to the truth. And it's had four years to reflect on the continuous MSM campaign which elected and has supported Obama.

I have not got over that stunt of Harry Reid's yet.We can probably substitute "disaffected former employee" for "friend," but it still is so unlikely that anyone within the bowels of Bain Capital has had access to Romney's personal tax returns, that I do not think Reid expected anyone to believe his story.

This kind of thing has of course been done before, but it has been done by disposable political operatives; I do not remember anything like this being done by a party leader, and certainly not by the Senate majority leader on the Senate floor.

Romney's ads are saying the economy is terrible and Obama will keep doing what he has been doing the last four years.

Obamas ads are saying the economy is terrible and Obama will keep doing what he has been doing for the last four years.

At the end of the day, I have to think that Romney will get more support out of this approach, especially if all Obama has are incredibly corrupt, defining nontransparency, Congressional leaders trying to critique Romney for possible financial irregularities.

I think my earlier week statement holds true. These polls are meaningless in that the pollsters want to get paid and therefore will skew these numbers in a way that will keep them getting paid. I don't believe them anymore at all. I think Romney is much further ahead than what is being told. Leftards are already in a crisis panic meltdown and the Romney killed my wife ad proves it.

That's what I thought at first too, but it's a 3-day equal-weighted rolling average, right? So each day of polling shows up in 5 figures; if all the other days are roughly consistent, then we'll see 5 days with Obama anomalously high, and then it'll drop back down to trend. But what we see is actually a spike with a sharp top, so there would have to have been three consecutive days in which he polled high.

It is also possible that a lot of Democrats have not been, and are not yet, willing to face up to just what they have been voting for. So the polls show wide support for Obama, but it may be shallow, and subject to reversal as it becomes time to actually vote again.

Public gets most of its information from MSM, but over time reflects on that chaos, reads between the lines (as Soviet citizens did with Pravda) and comes closer to the truth.

That made me think: he USSR fell apart in spite of the fact that its press was completely government controlled. Our press isn'y controlled, it's merely monumentally dishonest and incompetent. We just may be Ok after all.

And even the pro-Obama media and some Democrats are saying that the story that the Obama super-PACs is putting out there about the circumstances of Soptic's wife's death are a pack of lies.

When even the people backing you are calling you on your bullshit, then you're going down in the polls among any noncommitted people who are paying attention. And the closer we get to the election, the more the crowd who are more interested in DWTS or Gabby's hair will be looking at politics, distasteful as it may be. The only reason that Obama is as close as he is, given his abysmal record, is that those folks haven't been paying attention.

There's a random component to polls. Obama briefly jumped up to 47%. If he'd stayed there, it would have indicated an actual improvement in his position w/ the American public. He didn't. Which indicates the jump was random noise.

Now he's down to 43%. If he stays in that area for more than 3 days, it's probably real. If not, it was random fluctuation in the other direction.

No one day poll really matters. unfortunately, with early voting, not even the one day poll on Nov 6 will be entirely decisive (in the recent Texas runoff, almost half the votes were cast in early voting).

By now everyone knows that Obama isn't the smartest prez of all time nor is he a world champeen 3-D chess player. However, he is one sharp campaigner. He has put together the most expensive hi-tech campaign operation in the history of the world.

They have spent over $15 million on polls, and some of that, I suspect, has gone to bribing polling organizations for these crazy results favoring Obama by forcing the skew to Democrats.

But that's all the magician's misdirection. Ignore the polls and watch what Obama is doing. Everything he does panders to his base. If he were confident of them to the extent he needs them, he would be reaching out to moderates and independents, and he is not. That's where he would go if he could, but he can't.

I imagine his plan was to nail down his base by offering lots of red meat -- war on women, gay marriage, immigration, Romney as felon, plutocrat and murderer, etc. Then, when he had built momentum, switch back to his pragmatic centrist persona and start scooping up voters in the middle. If time allows, he might get to dust off his robes and halo and wheel himself out as the messiah again.

But he can't. He's stuck holding on to his base, and they won't be enough to win in November.

When even the people backing you are calling you on your bullshit, then you're going down in the polls among any noncommitted people who are paying attention. And the closer we get to the election, the more the crowd who are more interested in DWTS or Gabby's hair will be looking at politics, distasteful as it may be. The only reason that Obama is as close as he is, given his abysmal record, is that those folks haven't been paying attention.

No noncommitted people are paying attention yet.

The media will allow O to get away with bigger lies when the race starts in earnest, and cite this episode as proof of their evenhandedness.

You can still get spiking from a 3 day rolling average if the outlier poll is sufficiently extreme. It's an average of only 3 points, not a median, so it's sensitive to outliers. Less noisy than straight daily averages but not as smooth as one with a longer window. It's a sensitivity verses accuracy problem

My theory: The Harry Reid campaign, while meretricious, pointed to two real things: 1) Romney isn't sharing his income tax records; and 2) Whatever he paid, it was surely at a lower rate than what wage-earners pay. Those facts depress enthusiasm for Romney.

The Obama PAC's ad is another thing entirely. I don't think America is as outraged as anti-capitalists around Obama think it should be about the notion that sometimes people who own companies have to lay off employees. Obama can't promise that with a second term, there will be no more layoffs. Layoffs are part of the economy. Then when you add to that the very misleading nature of that ad, I think it will end up on the list of Obama gaffes that might cost him votes.

Obama's GM bailout tanked the retirement of Delphi retirees, most if not all were union members. My son tried to get on at Delphi and was told he had to be a UAW member. He said ok I'll join. They said sorry, we have too many UAW members already.

ken in sc said... Obama's GM bailout tanked the retirement of Delphi retirees, most if not all were union members.

I'm looking forward to this getting some play. It's not just the retirement plan disappearing. The Obama administration decided the union retirements would be funded with bailout money, and they decided the non-union retirements would be excluded. And both decisions were illegal since they PBGC is legally required to make those decisions.

It's quite clear Obama's interest in TARP was to bail out his favored constituents at the expense of everyone else. As the extent of his favortism becomes more and more obvious more Americans are going to reject it.

Romney has said he paid taxes, and lots of taxes, in all the 10 previous years, which surprised me some. I would have thought that if his money was parked in mutual funds, etc. while he was off doing politics, his portfolios should have taken substantial hits in 2000-01 and even worse in 2008-09, and you don't pay much taxes on losses.But then that level of finances are above my paygrade.

I hope that the Obama campaign continues these ad tactics against Romney. After a while - after the undecided voters realize these ads are just lies - the 'Boy who cried wolf' effect takes over. When that happens, when the voters have gotten tired of being conned, they'll start to make fun of the ads. The ads then become counter-productive.

Surprised no one has yet cited Rasmussen's own words on the recent bounce:

"The president enjoyed a bounce immediately following release of last week’s job report. However, the bounce has faded, and the race is back to where it was just before Friday’s report. See tracking history. Following that jobs report, consumer confidence fell to a new 2012 low yesterday and is barely above that low today."

It is funny to hear people who have made lying into a fine political art crying about Harry Reid's latest act of senility. Swift boat? Birthers? Clinton Chronicles? Obama (insert whatever ill understood ism you can find)... Tea Party anyone? Joe the Dummer?? A pack of lying rascals and small town boobs the likes we have not seen since the 1880's. And all of them dancing to the tune of that Great Liar in Chief Karl Rove. Paid for from the pockets of lying billionaires like Koch and Sciafe and whatever other pizza pusher and chicken nugget king who is hoping to raid the US Treasury. So here it goes...if you do not like lying, quit telling them and making excuse when your side starts launching their latest round of howlers.

Random fluctuations. Pundits keep jumping over them, but the polls haven't moved significantly since mid-April. This is in spite of all the negative ads. I can't help but think that the public is becoming inured to partisan spin.

Rasmussen is particularly noisy because of the mysterious way they weight the various sources of data they collect. Also, while they are a 3 day rolling average, Gallup is 5. Finally, I've noticed that Rasmussen tends to go up quite a bit whenever some other national polls have a good week for Obama. 2 +7s and a +10 this week (noticeably absent from the Althouse blog, but we know who she's in the tank for this round) and so Rasmussen had to do something to make sure the RCP average didn't go too out of whack. About a week before the election he'll start publishing legitimate results in order to save face on election day.

So, what, exactly, were the "lies" the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth told about Kerry? They claimed one of the guys going around with Kerry was giving Kerry credit for something someone else had done. Once the claim came out, the guy stopped going around with Kerry, indicating that was a true accusation.

They claimed Kerry's first Purple Heart was for a splinter. Kerry has still refused to release his military medical records, indicating that that accusation was also correct.

They claimed Kerry's first Purple Heart was for a splinter. Kerry has still refused to release his military medical records, indicating that that accusation was also correct.

I'm not sure "he didn't release his records" => accusation is correct. If that were the way things worked, then Romney paid no taxes for a decade and Obama was a C-student at Columbia (or is it Occidental? I don't recall exactly what it is people are concerned about with the President's old grades).

What is true about the Swift Boat is that every factual assertion that was resolved was in their favor. The lefties who scream it was "lies" are essentially disputing opinions or asserting facts as true they have no way of knowing.

It's hysterical they still bring it up, but the entire issue proves they don't really understand the elements of evidence and proof.

I don't recall exactly what it is people are concerned about with the President's old grades).

A lot of people were skeptical when we kept hearing what a genius this guy is without seeing any actual indication.

After spending eight years telling us what a moron Bush is (he isn't), it sure would be embarrassing to find Bush got better grades and did better on standardized tests than the guy who doesn't speak Austrian.

The main reason is that you are supposed to have good grades from your previous institution(s) in order to get accepted at a prestige college. If you don't have the grades, just how was your acceptance managed?And Columbia and Harvard are very expensive places to get an education, so if you have no visible sources for that kind of tuition, who paid it and why?What names, citizenship, etc. did you go by?

If Portman, Romney should make his selection before the convention. Let people discover who Portman is. The media says blah blah blah. And then we all turn into the convention to meet Portman.

If Rubio is the nominee, on the other hand, I think the campaign should leave it open until the convention. Spread a rumor that it might be Rubio. Let the anticipation build, and then announce his selection at the convention.

Rubio will excite the base. Portman will not (at least not initially). So I think, depending on which of the two is the selection, you handle it differently.

Same strategy if Romney picks anybody else. I think a non-Rubio pick will (hopefully temporary) deflate people a little. Any and all poll I have seen, Rubio is the #1 pick among Republicans. So hold off into the convention if you're giving the people what they want. But introduce the non-Rubio before the convention if you are contradicting the hopes of the base. That would be my strategy, anyway.

@balfegor,There are at least three differences between Kerry's med records and Romney's taxes:

1) The accusations against Kerry fit other known aspects of the story (throwing his medals, the Winter Soldier testimony, leaving the combat theater early, getting caught in contradictions about his claims regarding combat locations, etc), but the accusations of Mitt not paying taxes don't make any sense at all with what we know of him.

2) Kerry promised that his medical records could dispel what he characterized as "lies". Romney hasn't promised anything, he's demanded proof of the accusation.

3) Kerry actually announced he would release his medical records. He never followed through. Romney never said he would release more tax records than the law requires.

On the other hand, I understand your point. I'm just saying there *is* more daylight there than at first glance.

Most polls are meaningless. First of all, they always over represent dems in most of these polls. But as they are looking at a tiny cross section of people and then extrapolating, you can't expect consistency if, next week, you are speaking with an entirely new group of people. You wouldn't be looking at any swing in opinion, but simply the views of a different group of people.